Tuesday, April 7, 2015

ARC Review: The Pretty App by Katie Sise

Poor Blake Dawkins! She's rich, she's gorgeous, and she's the queen bee of Harrison High. The girls want to be her; the boys want to—okay, enough said. But it turns out Blake’s life is not so perfect—just talk to her dad, who constantly reminds her that she's not up to par, or to her ex-bff, Audrey, who doesn't even look her in the eye.Then Harrison—and every other high school in America—becomes obsessed with posting selfies on the ubiquitous Pretty App. Next: Leo, an adorable transfer student, arrives at Harrison and begins to show Blake that maybe being a queen bee doesn't mean being a queen bitch. And though Audrey suspects somebody’s playing foul, Blake finds herself catapulted to internet fame after being voted one of the prettiest girls in the country. She's whisked away to star in a reality show—in Hollywood, on live TV. But she doesn't know who to trust. Because everybody on the show wants to win. And nobody is there to make friends.

Review

I haven't read the first book yet, but I heard that this book could be read without reading the first one, so I read it anyway. I was honestly expecting so much more from this book.

The main character, Blake, was extremely annoying and selfish at first. All she cared about was her looks because she thought she had nothing else going for her other than that. She was mean because she thought that she was popular, so she had to be. Her actions were annoying. She keeps whining about how her life isn't perfect, and how miserable she is. Just because her life isn't perfect, doesn't make it right for her to make other people's lives miserable. And yeah she does change a lot in the end, but I never truly liked her throughout the entire story...

The plot and the whole romance was alright, but I found myself not really caring for the main character, the plot, the romance, the love interest, or anything to be honest. I felt like the whole story was more focused on relationships and feelings than anything else. And even that felt poorly executed. The plot was extremely boring and I actually didn't care about the reality-show part because it was just so obvious who would end up being the winner! And I was right about it too.

There was a twist in the romance, but I found it so obvious! Like there were so many hints that Leo was giving Blake, and I knew exactly what would happen from the first hint, but she didn't realize it until it happened and she saw for herself. The twist in the romance aside, the romance wasn't really enjoyable to me. The relationship went way too fast! This is basically a summary of how their relationship and the plot went:

Blake and Leo meet.

They like each other so they decide to go on a date.

Blake: "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?" Substitute the mirror with the Pretty App, and you get a pretty good idea of how Blake was acting.

Blake wins the contest in the school and has to go to Hollywood to be in the reality show. She tries to make Leo come with her, but he says no because he has to do something else and he disappears after telling her that what they have is real.

All books reviewed on Books Equal Awesomeness are purchased by me, borrowed, or received from authors/publishers in exchange for an honest review. I do not receive any monetary compensation for any of my reviews.